Category: reveal

A few weeks back on Bluesky I got a very nice compliment about how my books very frequently—actually, the word was inevitably—take a sharp turn. That got me thinking about twists in general. And then I glanced at that list I mentioned a few weeks back and… twists bumped up a few.

Before I dive in deep, though, I thought it might be good to define a few terms up front, just to cut down on any possible confusion as we move along.

A reveal is when the characters or the reader get a new piece of information. I refer you back to the often-quoted-here Damon Knight rule of thumb— facts my readers and characters don’t know are information, facts they already know are noise. Some reveals are key and dramatic. Others are not.

A mystery is when the main character and the readers are aware that information has been hidden from them and are searching for that unknown fact. Really simply, a mystery is when someone in my story has a question and is trying to find the answer.

Real quick aside—please don’t confuse mystery the story element with mystery the genre. All mystery stories are about mysteries, but not all mysteries are in a mystery stories. Make sense? I know, giving them the same name is confusing. Not sure who we can blame for that

Anyway, that brings us to a twist. A twist is when information is revealed that my characters and the audience didn’t know was being kept from them. Unlike a mystery, they don’t even suspect those facts are out there. When a twist appears, it comes from out of nowhere and changes a lot of perceptions for the characters and the audience.

So let’s talk about what makes a good twist. Or at least, what I think makes a good twist. Your MFA professor may have different ideas. And just for fun, I’ll mention a few ways they can go wrong.

I think a good twist always has four distinct elements…

First, as I just mentioned, my readers and my characters don’t expect a twist is coming. By it’s very nature, it’s a surprise that hits when we least expect it, often in a way we don’t expect it.

Keep in mind, if I tell you there’s a big secret about our hero’s best friend… well, I’ve just told you her best friend has a big secret. If I tell you you’ll never guess who they run into in Argentina, I’ve just told you they’re going to run into someone unexpected in Argentina. It’s a lot harder to be surprised by something we’re expecting, so it’s hard for any twist to land well when my readers are already on the lookout for it.

This is one of the reasons I rant about spoilers a lot. If I’ve structured my story so that this reveal has a certain dramatic weight, knowing the reveal ahead of time means that’s just gone from information to noise (there’s Damon Knight again). In my dramatic structure, it’s just gone from a high point to almost a flat line.

Second, the information a twist reveals has to be something my readers and characters didn’t already know but they need to know. Revealing that the murder victim is dead is kind of a given. Showing you Billy has a pet cat isn’t much of a reveal because, well, we’ve been talking about the cat since chapter four. It’s a fact that doesn’t carry any weight at all. Telling you Billy’s cat is a seven hundred year old immortal Wichianmat from the Empire of Ayutthaya —well, that’s something you didn’t know.

It’s worth noting I need to be revealing information the audience doesn’t know, but it has to be information they could know. It can’t break the characters or the world I’ve established. It needs to fit within that context. If I’ve been talking on and off about the ancient secrets of the Ayutthan Empire for twenty chapters now, cool. If this is a modern-day romance between rival hockey players that’s never referenced anything farther back than February… Empire of What?

A good rule of thumb is that whatever information I’m revealing in my twist is something my readers should be able to guess—even if it might mean a lot of guesses. If I have sixteen characters/ potential suspects in my murder mystery, it shouldn’t take forty-two guesses to name the murderer. If the big surprise is that Phoebe is Wakko’s niece, the readers should probably know who Wakko is. And why it would be shocking that he has a niece.

Third, the information revealed in a twist has to change how my readers and characters see previous events in the story. This is the moment when our view of things get twisted (ha ha ha now I get it) and we realize we’ve been looking at things the wrong way. And again, seeing them the right way should give my readers a bit of a thrill as everything realigns and fall into place in new ways.

That said, this new information can’t actually contradict previous events or any of the information my readers have been given up until now. Worth noting—this is when a lot of twists go wrong. I can’t reveal Billy’s dog is immortal when it’s been a cat for the past 200 pages. Also, this is still a hockey romance, but Billy was always a baseball superstar. And a federal marshal. Who’s here in New Orleans hunting immortal cats.

One of the worst examples of this is when we’ve been seeing over a character’s shoulder for a few hundred pages and they just, y’know, never happened to think about how they’re the serial killer the whole team’s been hunting. Or that Wakko knew Dot was the killer since chapter four but just didn’t mention it or act on it until the last twenty pages. For reasons.

Fourth and last, a twist needs time to build up strength. It’s really tough to have a good twist in the first five pages of a novel. As I mentioned above, a twist needs to alter our view of past events, which means… there have to be past events. So they tend to happen in the back half of the story.

I think a large part of this is that bit I just mentioned above about everything realigning. The power of a good twist comes from how many things it forces us to re-examine, so more time means more things. Some folks try to have their big twist in chapter two and it usually falls flat. Instead of seeing a dozen things in a new light we’re seeing… two? Maybe one? And sometimes, yeah… none

And that’s that.

Again, these are my own requirements, not something (to the best of my knowledge) taught in any courses or books. And as always, there’s always going to be a few exceptions, sure. But I’ve found these four elements tend to be pretty solid.

Y’see, Timmy, when a twist lands right, your readers will absolutely love you for it. They’ll re-read the whole book just to see how you slipped it past them. You can’t have slipped this past me! Holy crap you did!!!

But if I mess up a twist… at best it’ll leave readers with this gnawing, something-doesn’t-sit-right feeling. Or they’ll go back through the book and pick it apart. And at worst… they’ll just shake their heads, put my book aside, and forget about it.

And that’s definitely not the reaction I want a twist to get.

Next time… well, okay, next time is probably going to be in two weeks because I’ve got a handful of final tweaks to do on The Off Season. But when next time shows up, unless someone mentions something cooler, I’m probably going to talk about that one thing you were supposed to do.

Until then, go write.

Happy Halloween, everyone! Hope you’re all prepared for tonight. And may the gods have mercy on those of you who aren’t…

Let’s talk about scary movies for a moment.

If you aren’t familiar, there was a long-running movie series called Resident Evil based off the long running game series of the same name, which also spawned a series of animated movies. But we’re talking about the live action ones. Well, the original live-action ones.

Specifically, I’d like to talk with you about the first one, written and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. Rather than base the movie directly off the game story, Anderson decided to use lots of elements from the game with all-new characters. This gave him a lot more freedom in how he told the story, and let him structure the film for a general audience instead of specifically for fans of the game.

That structure is what I wanted to talk about. If you’ve been following the ranty writing blog for a while, you know I love pointing out how well this movie uses flashbacks. Seriously, it’s amazing. The movie’s pretty much a masterclass in how to do flashbacks well in a story. They all serve a clear purpose. They all advance either the plot or the story (often both). They all fit within the narrative and linear structure of the story. And none of them create fake-tension situations that are undermined by the present. You can read more about my rules-of-thumb for flashbacks right here, if you like.

So I figured, since it’s Halloween and all, I’d walk through these flashbacks one by one and show you how and why they’re so effective.

Now, you’re going to get a lot more out of this little rant if you’ve seen the movie. I highly recommend checking it out. It’s seasonal, it’s fun, it’s much more of an action-horror film than a gorefest. I don’t know if it’s streaming free anywhere, but I think you can rent it most places for three or four bucks? Also, kind of goes without saying but there are going to be some unavoidable spoilers in this discussion so… be warned.

Here’s a brief refresher for those of you who haven’t seen it in a while (or are just determined to go on without seeing it)…

Resident Evil begins with a few quick minutes showing the lab accident that kicks off everything before the lab goes into a drastic lockdown mode that seems to kill, well, everyone. And after that we’re with our heroine, Alice, who wakes up naked and wet on the floor of a bathroom, half-draped in a shower curtain and suffering from near-complete amnesia. Very quickly she learns she’s part of a security detail guarding a hidden entrance to the Hive, a massive underground lab/ testing facility operated by the multinational, multibillion dollar Umbrella Corporation. And the lab accident earlier has set a very nasty bioweapon loose down there, the T-virus, which has had, politely, some effects on the researchers and other staff members.

And we’ll stop there for now.

So let’s talk flashbacks. I’ll try to go over all of them and give you a little context for each one. I’m also going to mention where they are so if you’re actually doing your homework, you can skim around in the movie and find them.

Our first one shows up a little over nine minutes in. Alice has woken up, staggered to the bathroom mirror, and is staring at her reflection when this flashback kicks in for a few seconds. She was in the shower, there was a vent, her eyes rolled up, and she collapsed, dragging the shower curtain down with her.

So this first one does a few things. It tells us right up front Alice didn’t pass out she was knocked out—this is something that was done to her, not something that just happened. It also establishes her flashbacks are very distinct from the “present’ story line in the movie—they’re in overexposed black and white, with echoey sound and a fast cut, glitchy quality that helps sell her fragmented memory. And it fits story-wise. This is something she’s focused on and trying to remember. It also fits because it’s relevant to what’s going on and it’s something we, the audience want to know. So on a few levels it makes sense we’re seeing this and not, y’know, last night’s dinner or something.

Also worth noting Alice’s reactions after this flashback because it’s very clear this is all the information she got from this sparked memory. She still doesn’t know who or where she is, or what’s going on. This is going to hold for all the flashbacks—she doesn’t get anything “extra” out of them. She sees what we see.

Our next flashback comes at eighteen minutes in. Alice has been taken with the security team to the underground train that leads to the Hive, and they’ve found an unconscious man on board. Alice stares at the man’s face and flashes back to her and him together and happy. Again, just quick flashes. Her in a gown, him in a tux, laughing, posing for photos together.

Worth noting that Alice had also seen a wedding photo of her and said man a few minutes earlier, and this flashback pretty much explains where that photo came from. It also connects the two for the audience—the man here now on the floor of the train (we’ll learn his name is Spence and he’s also suffering from gas-induced amnesia) is the man we saw earlier in photos. Whoever he is, Alice has a definite history with him.

Which brings us to the third flashback. Maybe 22 minutes in now. It’s mostly a recap of the first one as the security team commander explains what’s actually going on here and gets everyone up to speed. So as he’s explaining the computerized security systems and known side effects of the gas (short-term amnesia), we see Alice get gassed in the shower again—this time with an extra few shots to show us how the vents are hidden away in the walls.

So this one’s a little more structural—it’s a quick reminder for the audience. It emphasizes things are run by the computer (some of you know where that’s going). It’s giving us a bit more information about how thing are hidden and automated in Umbrella facilities.

Our fourth flashback happens three or four minutes later (just shy of 26 minutes in). We’re in the Hive now, and Spence offers Alice his leather jacket to keep warm. It’s the first time they’ve actually touched and it sets off a bunch of memories for Alice. Really specific ones showing she and Spence knew each other. Like, y’know… knew each other. Physically. As was the style at the time.

And that means now Alice knows something about Spence. He’s clearly someone she has a history with, and a history that involved, well, a degree of sharing and trust between them. As always, she doesn’t remember anything else, but it’s enough that she clearly decides he’s someone she can trust.

Notice the pattern here so far. All four of these flashbacks barely add up to fifteen seconds. They’re not slowing anything down. They’re all related to the actual events going on and the information the movie’s giving us (and Alice). And every one of them tells us something new—there’s very, very little noise. They all keep advancing out knowledge of the plot or the characters.

The next flashback doesn’t happen for almost half an hour—there’s a lot of action going on and dropping in a flashback would just disrupt the flow of things. Then around the 53 minute mark, Alice saves Matt from a zombie that’s attacking him and she recognizes this zombie. We get our longest flashback yet (almost ten seconds!)– Alice and this woman meeting in a deserted graveyard, where Alice is offering her access to the T-virus, Umbrella access codes, surveillance plans… for a price.

So… this one does a bunch of stuff. It’s suddenly casting Alice’s real goals and loyalties into question (at a point when she still can’t even remember them). It’s showing us she was part of a larger story than just the current events going on in the Hive, and making it clear Umbrella has been a questionable company for a while now. It’s also a nice reminder all these zombies were actual people—people we saw back at the start of this doing their jobs, chatting, drinking coffee, and just living their own lives.

And it doesn’t help that shortly after this Matt tells Alice the mystery woman was his sister. The two of them were gathering information to expose Umbrella’s illegal, unethical practices. His sister had found someone who could get them all the information they needed to get out with the evidence… but whoever it was they betrayed her. So now this flashback has Alice really questioning herself—and us questioning her, too. Amnesia-Alice seems great, but maybe if she had all her memories…?

Now, something happens around 70 minutes in that’s worth mentioning. Alice gets some memories back but it’s not set up as a flashback. It’s not in blown-out black and white. It’s not glitchy. And she’s not part of it. She just suddenly recognizes an area of the Hive they’re in and pictures it up and running and full of people. And she remembers what should be in a nearby lab– the cure for the T-virus.

I think this is worth noting because by breaking the flashback format here, the movie’s showing us that things are changing. Alice is getting more solid memories, and they’re appearing more solid because of that. The flashbacks are a clever device and being used well, but things are moving past the point of needing them and trying to force this particular bit of information into that format could actually be distracting at this point. And we never want our flashbacks to be distracting. Also, this scene is a little longer and somewhat talky but it’s happening at a time when our main story has slowed down a bit. Again, it isn’t messing with our flow.

So… moving on. One final flashback, and it happens just two minutes after the last one. They find the lab with the cure and it’s gone. The vault is empty. And as our heroes look around the lab trying to find some clue what might’ve happened to it… Spence has a flashback. And it’s a big one.

Turns out Spence was spying on that meeting in the graveyard, and he decided to steal the T-virus first. And almost 2/3 of his flashback is… the very beginning of the movie. All seen from his point of view. Spence caused the lab accident! Deliberately! To cover his theft.

(fun fact—if you freeze frame at the three minute mark in the very beginning, you can actually see it’s Spence right then! At 3:02, to be exact)

So, what does this last flashback do? It tells us what really happened to cause the lab accident. It reveals Spence as one of our main villains all along. And it firmly establishes that Alice, with or without her memories, is our hero—we find out her “price” for giving Matt’s sister all this evidence is that they use it to destroy the Umbrella Corporation.

Again, new information given in a way that adds to the tension, doesn’t slow down the pace of the actual story, doesn’t undermine anything.

See what I mean? Seven flashbacks in a movie that’s barely a hundred minutes. And heck, really all of them are in the first seventy minutes or so. And every one of them works for both the narrative and linear structure. Every one of them gives us information that’s relevant to “now.”

That’s some good zombie flashbacks.

Next time, I’d like to talk about how long all this takes.

Until then… well, enjoy Halloween.

And then go write.

A few weeks back a friend asked me to look at their new manuscript, and something about it gnawed at me. It was doubly gnawsome because it’s something I’ve wanted to talk about here on the ranty blog but could never quite find the right words for. We ended up talking and it suddenly hit me how to explain it. In fact, I asked them if we could pause for a few seconds so I could scribble some notes down for myself.

And now you get to benefit from these thoughts.

I’m guessing most of you have probably heard of Chekhov’s rifle. Basic idea is that if we see a rifle in act one, it should go off in act three. Because if it doesn’t go off… what’s the point of it? Why am I cluttering up my manuscript with rifles that don’t so anything.

Another way to look at this is a setup and a payoff. I make a point of bringing up X now, and later X becomes important for this particular scene, plot thread, or maybe the entire book. For some reason Dad gives Wakko his old pager and fifteen chapters later we realize the last number it received was actually the combination for the hidden vault in the basement. We learn Phoebe used to shoot hoops with her older brothers and then saving the Surf Shack comes down to who can make the most baskets in five minutes. Setup. Payoff.

Now, let’s discuss.

First off, the setup/payoff relationship isn’t quite its own thing. It’s more of a structure element than a literary device. Reveals use setups and payoffs. So do twists. It’s always going to be an aspect of something else, so I don’t want to be thinking of it as some separate, distinct thing.

Second is the big one, and it’s what I wanted to blather on about the most. I’m a big believer that time is a very large aspect of a good setup-payoff relationship. The more time elapses for my reader (or whatever audience I’m dealing with) between the setup and the payoff, the more powerful the payoff will be. My characters will look smarter. My threats will look bigger. My unspeakable horrors will look SO much worse

Or should be, if I’ve got everything else working right.

I’ve talked about this a little bit before. A twist, for example, doesn’t carry a lot of weight on page three. If I want this to just be a cool beat, it doesn’t need the extra time that an OH HOLY CRAP level payoff needs. That time lets my readers absorb the setup, settle into the story, and the more comfortable they are the more impact it’ll have when my payoff hits. So I want to make sure I’ve worked out the right amount of time between the setup and the payoff for the weight I want that reveal to have.

Actually, I just thought of a great metaphor. Imagine you’re leaning out a window with a fairly heavy-duty water balloon. If I just open a first floor window and drop it, there’s a decent chance that balloon’s just going to bounce on the sidewalk and maybe roll away. But from a fourth story window, that water balloon’s definitely going to burst. And if I’m dropping it from a tenth story window… I mean, that thing’s going to explode. It’s the same balloon, but the different distances change how much impact it has. Make sense?

Now, a few things to watch out for…

If I have shorter times between my setups and payoffs, they start to look different. More like I’m just throwing out solutions and then presenting a problem for them. Remember my example up above? It’s one thing if Wakko gets the pager on page nine and he figures out it’s got the vault combination on page seventy, but it’s got a very different feel to it if he gets it on page sixty-six and then figures out the combination four pages later. Especially if I have this sort of structure two or three times throughout my book. This is the kind of thing that makes my writing feel episodic as it happens, well, again and again. Again, dropping from the water balloon from the first story window. Even if it’s a really big water balloon, it might not burst as much as… fall apart? It just won’t be as dramatic.

Also, side issue, if I’m doing this later and later in my story, it can feel a bit fake. I’ve set up the world and my characters, but when I start introducing new elements in the back half just so I can solve problems… that’s probably going to feel a little cheaty. Especially in genre stories. What’s that? I never mentioned the SV-7 androids only have one weak point and it’s at the top of their head? Well, I’m mentioning it now that I’m up here on the catwalk above this one. Again, solution and problem vs setup and payoff.

And I’m not going to lie. Finding this time-reveal ratio can take a little work. It’s one of those things that’s going to be a little different for every situation and every story. And the only one who’s going to know what’s right is.. well, you. The writer. Because you’re the only one who knows how all these reveals and twists and other payoffs are supposed to land.

Y’see, Timmy, at the end of the day it’s really not about the water balloon—it’s about the size of the splash it makes.

Next time, I figured I’d get into the holiday spirit and talk about why it’s good to be the Invisible Man. Or Invisible Woman. Really, any Invisible Person.

Until then, go write.

Despite the pandemic, there’s still been a lot of fantastic storytelling going on. Books. Movies. TV shows. Some of it’s been fun, some of it nostalgic, some of it… well, let’s be honest, some of it was greatly delayed because of said pandemic. Regardless there’s been a lot of enjoyable stuff.

BUT…

As Uncle Ben taught us, with great storytelling comes great spoilers.

As I’m sure you know, spoilers are a matter of great contention. Is it my fault or your fault if I post spoilers to something and you see them? How much time has to pass before spoilers are acceptable? Does getting them really affect my enjoyment of the story? Do spoilers even matter?

I’ve talked about (and in some cases, argued about) all these before, here and on the wider internet. But it’s that last one I wanted to blather on about today. Specifically, a certain angle some folks take with it you may have seen. It goes something like this…

”If knowing a spoiler ruins your story… maybe your story’s not that good.”

This one always makes me grind my teeth. Partly because it’s kind of an inherently smug thing to say, but also because it shows a basic misunderstanding of storytelling. Which is why it’s doubly annoying when I see it from… well, storytellers.

So let’s talk about narrative structure for a few minutes.

I’ve talked about this before at length, so I won’t do too much here (hit that link if you want a lot more). For our immediate purposes, narrative structure’s the order I’ve decided my plot points and character elements need to follow. It’s the sequence I want my audience to receive information in so they’ll get a certain dramatic effect. Simply put, narrative structure is the way I’ve chosen to tell my story.

If I want to tell my story in a straight A-to-Z fashion, that’s my narrative choice. If I want to use a bunch of flashbacks, that’s also up to me as the storyteller. Heck, if I decide to go completely nonlinear and change timeframes every other page without any apparent rhyme or reason… I mean, that’s my call. I’m the one telling the story and I (hopefully) have solid reasons for why I’m telling it in this specific way.

But whichever way I do it—assuming I do have a reason and I’m not just skipping around wildly because I thought it’d be cool—I’ve made a specific choice for my audience to get this piece of information first, this one second, this one third, and so on and so forth up to my five hundred and fortieth piece of information.

Yes, all real novels contain exactly five hundred and forty elements. No more, no less, just as Plato said in his many treatise on storytelling.

Anyway…

Now, that order’s important because my narrative structure is one of the things that defines my story. If I put them in a different order, it’s a different story. That makes sense, right? An example I’ve used before is The Sixth Sense. If you’ve never seen it before and somehow avoided hearing about it… well, first off, seriously, good for you. Go see it right now. Go! Now! I can’t believe you’ve made it this long. And I’m about to spoil it, so please don’t keep reading.

Did you go away?

Okay, spoiler-filled explanation…

The Sixth Sense is the skin-crawling story of child psychologist named Malcolm who’s trying to treat a little boy named Cole. Cole’s haunted by ghosts that only he can see, which leaves him constantly traumatized and in shock. Malcolm helps Cole realize the ghosts are, in their own way, equally scared and asking for help. And as Cole begins to understand that his powers are a gift, not a curse, Malcolm comes to realize that he’s a ghost—that he died over a year ago in an encounter we saw at the start of the movie.

What’s great, though, is that—like I said up above—if you watch the movie a second time (or if someone spoils the twist for you), it becomes a very different story. In fact, knowing the truth about Malcolm and the other ghosts, the story becomes less scary and much more tragic. Almost goofy at points. Now it’s a story about a kid and his ghost friends solving mysteries. It’s pretty much Paranorman.

That’s the key thing here—The Sixth Sense becomes a different story. Not the one Shyamalan intended for us to see. Definitely not the one he narratively structured. The audience learning the truth about Malcolm is intended to be element five hundred and nine, not element one that we knew before we even sat down. Knowing the big twist changes it into a different story.

So the whole “…maybe your story’s not that good” argument doesn’t make a lot of sense, because if I see a bunch of spoilers it means I haven’t seen your story. I saw a different story that had all the same elements, but in a different order and thus with different dramatic weights. It had a completely different narrative structure. I got Paranorman, not The Sixth Sense. Not that there’s anything wrong with Paranorman (I love it) but… it’s not the initial experience Shyamalan was trying to create for us.

Now, there’s another, related point we can make here. By their nature, spoilers tend to be some kind of reveal. It’s a piece of unknown or unexpected information. Maybe it’s a cool twist. Maybe it’s the identity of the murderer. Maybe it’s just a little cameo/ crossover beat. And sometimes, once that information’s been revealed, we realize this story didn’t have much else going for it. Once we know who the murderer is, we realize it was our own desire to know the answer carrying us through the story, not really the story itself. The story’s not flawed, it’s just… well, also not that great in any way.

Or maybe the answer just wasn’t quite worth the build up. Maybe the murderer turns out to be… well, exactly who we thought it was. Or someone we absolutely never could have considered (“Chris? Who the hell is Chris?”). Maybe the big twist happens and it… doesn’t make a lot of sense? Maybe it doesn’t change anything or doesn’t mean anything (“Chris is actually Pat’s long lost cousin? Well who the hell is Pat?”). In these cases the story beat might land with some impact in the moment, but not so much after the fact.

And, yeah, these stories have problems. I mean, a twist by its very nature should sort of retroactively rewrite large swaths of my story. If it doesn’t do that… well, that means I screwed up. If my flashback doesn’t make linear sense within my story, then I’ve done something wrong. My reveals aren’t doing what they’re supposed to do.

But problems with something flawed doesn’t mean the principle is flawed. I can’t say narrative structure doesn’t matter because a couple stories have crappy narrative structure. That’s like saying all sushi is bad because I bought sushi at a gas station once and it made me sick. Or, y’know, that Sharknado5: Global Swarming has a dumb twist that doesn’t change anything, therefore I can give away a bunch of stuff from Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

I mean, maybe it’s just me, but that doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense…

Yes, a really good story will still work once you know the big reveal. That’s why there are books we like to re-read and movies we watch three or four times. The storytellers were very careful to make sure  their narrative would still work even when it was forced to switch tracks because we knew things. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t want us to see the original story they planned out.

I know in my own writing I love having a good twists and reveals. Things that’ll make people sit up and go “WhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAATTT???” or maybe even shriek a favorite curse word or two. And I try very, very hard to make sure my books hold up on a second reading, that you’ll catch the little clues and maybe even realize I left some things sitting out in plain sight for you to catch on your second or third read, so that other story is still a fun one for you.

(like page 115 of Paradox Bound, for example. I don’t think anyone’s caught that. Not many people, anyway)

But that’s not the story I want you to read first. There’s a reason I put these things on page one and not page fifty, those things on page one hundred and not on page one, and why I was slightly vague about that so it’d be right where it was supposed to be… but you wouldn’t register what it was until a second or third time through.  Because this is the effect I’m trying to create, not that.

And the awful thing about spoilers is they make sure someone can never read this story. It’s almost impossible to unlearn something, so that experience gets lost forever. They never get to read this story… only that one.

And that’s a shame.

Again, as I mentioned above, still many issues about spoilers past this one. But hopefully—for now, at least—we’ve put the “do they even matter” question to rest. And also the “maybe your story’s not that good” defense of them.

Also-also, that Plato thing about halfway through was a joke. Please put that to rest too. In fact, forget it, just to be safe. Wipe it from your mental hard drive.

Next time…

I’ve got to be honest, I’m juggling four different projects right now and (at the moment) none of them have inspired a ranty blog post. So next week may just be some random cartoons or something unless any of you has a pressing question you’d like me to blather on about.

Until then… go write.